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Tuesday, June 10, 2003
posted by gbarto at 4:42 AM:
French news headlines:Le Monde: Retirement at the Assembly: The Moment of Truth. The strikes and marches are still continuing, and spreading. It's the 11th day for the education strikes, transport strikes continue and there are now warnings about banks, post offices, telecommunications, hospitals, police and more.
Le Figaro: The Longest Tuesday for Raffarin - with the opening of debate on retirement reform, with a roundtable on what to do with education and with the news of the growing list of demonstrations and strikes.
Libé: The Street Pounds the Pavement, Parliament Debates. Notes Libé, the retirement reform proposal reached the Assembly virtually unchanged, despite questions.
Ouest-France: Retirement Reform Before the Deputies.
It's looking like the government is holding the line, amazingly enough, and they don't seem to have buckled just yet. The big question is whether the unions will shut down French society before the government caves or if the government will manage to hold it all together. One thing that is unfortunately missing - from what I see - is a coordinated campaign to separate the unions from toute la France in asserting that the Chirac/Raffarin movement is the true defender of the latter. There are shades of this thinking in some of the individual statements made, but it's a theme that might need hammering home. Still, it is reassuring to see that so far the government has not issued an announcement that it has come to grips with its existence as an evil empire that, however well meaning, was evil and is changing its ways to admit of the sunniness and light that is the CGDT's understanding of the world. Only one thing to note: Raffarin is a sharp guy and Chirac's about as cagey as they come; the duo might pull it off. I'm not optimistic, but I'm less pessimistic than I'd probably be with anybody less clever about saving their own bacon than Chirac.
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